Local news sites are notorious for low signal-to-noise ratios.  The news content is good, but that’s often crowded out by excessive ads, Flash videos, runaway JavaScript, and animated GIFs. These things make 90s websites look clean and elegant. I get seasick visiting them.

My typical antidote has been to just stick to RSS, and let blockers like Chrome’s Click to Play squelch things when I have to visit the site.  But the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) recently broke their RSS feeds while at the same time expanded their JavaScript and floating div monstrosities. What’s a guy to do when he just wants to read the latest Falcons and Georgia Tech news?

Well, I took the nuclear solution and went with lynx.  Yes, lynx: the old text mode browser. Whenever I want to read content from the AJC or similar news sites, I just fire it off from the command line and browse away. It works well, and I can do a quick news check in no time. Hopefully, the AJC won’t start disallowing or punishing lynx use.